Where in the world is Alexanda Kotey? The former ISIS terrorist known as one of the “Beatles” — four Brits who tortured and killed Americans and others on video — had previously been sentenced to life in a high-security federal prison in Canaan, Pennsylvania. Last night, however, several reports noted that Kotey no longer appears in the Bureau of Prisons records for Canaan.

Or anywhere else, for that matter:

One of the so-called ‘ISIS Beatles’ serving a life sentence for the torture and murder of western hostages has disappeared from the US prison system.

Alexanda Kotey, 39, is no longer in custody at Pennsylvania’s high-security Canaan prison, Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) records revealed.

The Londoner was jailed in America last year after having pleaded guilty in 2021 to eight criminal charges relating to the abduction, torture and beheading of Islamic State hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015.

They’re not kidding, either. Here’s a screencap of the BOP inmate locator result:

Does that mean that Kotey has escaped custody, or — gulp — been released?  Not exactly, but the BoP response isn’t exactly a confidence-builder either:

A BOP spokesperson told MailOnline today: ‘Alexanda Amon Kotey is not currently in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.’

The official added that there are ‘several reasons’ why an inmate could be referenced as not in the system, but did not disclose why Kotey received that designation.

‘Inmates who were previously in BOP custody and who have not completed their sentence may be outside BOP custody for a period of time for court hearings, medical treatment or for other reasons,’ the spokesperson stated.

That’s a pretty poor bookkeeping system, if that’s the case. Shouldn’t BoP at least be able to tell reporters whether Kotey is still in custody and which agency has him? After all, this isn’t just an academic exercise. The families of Kotey’s victims deserve justice, and at the moment they seem very clear that this ain’t it, even if it means that Kotey’s turned into a cooperating witness:

At least 27 people are believed to have been kidnapped and killed by the terror outfit. Among those killed were four Americans and two Britons, including humanitarian worker David Haines.

Haines’ 24-year-old daughter Bethany Haines told The Record on Wednesday that she thinks Kotey is still in the US penal system. Bethany Haines of Perth believes Kotey is “assisting authorities” and demands that he be sent back to a high-security jail to complete his sentence.

“In the past he has been traceable, as we have access to data via the US victim notification scheme, and we at least had the reassurance that he was in a high security facility,” she told the outlet.

“I don’t want to think that he has managed to negotiate his way into any kind of easy treatment on the basis of him assisting authorities or anything else.”

It’s tough to imagine what information Kotey has that might still be valuable. Kotey and his fellow surviving “Beatle” El Shafee Elsheikh were captured almost exactly five years ago, trying to exit Syria into Turkey. It took more than three years to complete Kotey’s trial, when he suddenly decided to plead guilty and cooperate in September 2021. That was how Kotey avoided the Florence super-max facility, which was the only concession of which anyone knew at the time.

FWIW, Elsheikh refused to cooperate and got a life sentence last August. The Bureau of Prisons houses him at Florence. Have fun staring at cinderblocks for the next several decades.

We know Elsheikh’s status, so let’s get back to Kotey. The Trump administration worked hard to get Kotey into the US to face justice for his American victims, an arrangement that the UK reportedly preferred sotto voce anyway. Has the Department of Justice and or “a different agency” taken him into somewhat softer custody to get intel that would be at least a few years old? Has the Biden administration quietly extradited Kotey back to the UK, which was one of his initial demands? Did the BoP simply have a medical issue with Kotey and have him in a hospital under a local law-enforcement jurisdiction’s custody temporarily?

Or is Kotey going to be swapped in some sort of hostage negotiation?

Here’s another question that might help clarify the above. How did reporters find out about Kotey’s sudden lack of status in BoP in the first place? It seems very doubtful that these reporters spend their days checking on Kotey’s status. Perhaps the families of the victims do, and they discovered his absence. Or maybe someone in the system tipped off Daily Mail reporters and others, which would tend to indicate something other than a temporary transfer for medical conditions is afoot.

Someone had better start providing answers. Soon.